ABSTRACT
When most people hear the word magic, they most likely picture a rabbit being pulled out of a hat or an elephant disappearing before their eyes. Early anthropologists were quite ethnocentric when it came to the study of magic, often placing it in a separate category from religion. Closely related to magic are supernatural ways of gaining information about the unknown, be it what will happen in the future, what is happening in some faraway place, or the cause of an illness. These techniques are aspects of divination. Homeopathic or imitative magic assumes that there is a causal relationship between things that appear to be similar. Contagious magic is based on the premise that things that were once in contact always maintain a connection. Techniques for obtaining information about things unknown, including events that will occur in the future, is known as divination.
